It's been one and a half months in the planning stage but we finally started the project. In collaboration with a team of creatives we started the first half of shots for Tonya Gross Millinery (2010 collection) and will finish up with one more day in mid August. This is not the norm for me to shoot tfp but I approached Tonya several months ago after finding her website and discussed with her how I would like to shoot her hats for my portfolio. Tonya was happy with the idea and we quickly put together a team of people to help make our vision a reality. The shots above are just a few of many and more can be seen on my website. I will post more from this shoot later.
The shots in the car were actually taken in the basement of the building where the car was found. I first worked out the main light which was a 5' octabox with grid to the right of camera along side the car and feathered toward the camera to just skim the model and car. I had a hard light with grid on the left side in back and one in the right side back to help seperate Kelly and the hat from the background. The shot of the model from her back used the same lights just re-arranged. You can look at the actual light on the model and car to see where the lights were. Lighting starts with vision. If you know what you want the final image to look like, you are half way there. Look at an image and see where the light is coming from and the shadow that is produced. Look at the catch light(s) in the eyes to see the shape of it. Look at the color of the light, the quantity and the edges of the shadows. Are the shadow edges soft or hard. What about the direction of the light? Study your favorite images to see how they were lit. When you can do this, it will be much easier to take the vision in your head and translate it to a photo.
